Laughlin’s Bakery has quite a backstory. It was once a home-baking operation run by a disabled opera singer (a casualty of a broken vocal chord). In August of 2014, it launched a Kickstarter bid for $35,000 to open a storefront business.
If you know anything about Kickstarter, you know the profile of successful projects. While it has a 44 percent success rate, that’s mostly for projects that raise under $10,000. Funding for bigger projects is hard to come by. Even if/when funding is realized, researchers say that 75 percent of Kickstarter projects fail to meet schedules.
Laughlin’s Bakery didn’t make $35,000, it scored more like $43,000. And it had its Short North doors open in time for this year’s holiday eating season.
With a few weeks under its belt now, Laughlin’s has fostered a nice little sense of community. You might see a family headed out the door with goodies for a weekend breakfast, or folks from the neighborhood, camped out at the tables with a cup of coffee.
And at eye level at the counter are a bevy of baked goods behind a glass case.
There doesn’t seem to be a particularly sensible way to start a trial binge. Perhaps with some tea cakes ($3): they are thick cut and moist, more like a familiar slice of quick bread. The Pistachio-Honey is especially good; the pistachios are distributed in teeny particles that give it a rich flavor. The bottom of each slice is expecially honey-ish –perhaps an extra soak brings the magic.
Or try a giant cookie, the Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookie ($3.50) is embarrassingly large. It’s practically sandwich sized (not cookie sandwich, PB&J sandwich). Two mammoth, chewy peanut butter cookies are held together with a sweet peanut butter froth inside.
Brownies ($2) are likely a bakery requirement. There is an undeniable quality to the brownie; moist, nutty, with a deep chocolate taste. That said, the Columbus scene has a longstanding tradition of loading brownies down with chips and goodies. For those accustomed to chunky additions beyond nuts, move along.
For that chunkier experience, move along to something like, good night, is that Fruitcake? It is not. Evidently, it is Dried Fruit & Nut Bread (a semantic puzzle for $4), a dense configuration of nuts and dried fruit highlighted by dates, soft fig bits, and prunes. From a fruitcake lover’s perspective, it is outstanding.
There’s also a wintery Gingerbread ($2). Having been exposed to gingerbread primarily in the form of stale male-shaped cookies, Laughlin’s is shockingly good: a dense, moist bar with a translucent shield of icing. That same icing shield covers the Lemon Madeleines ($2), which are shell shaped lemon cakes.
The bakery also does croissants, the Almond Croissant ($4) is impossibly light and airy, loaded with toasted almonds and a generous almond paste filling.
And finally, something savory for dessert? Perhaps it’s the overdose of sugar that makes the Cheddar Dill Scone ($3) so very enjoyable. It is not sweet, but instead has intense butter and cheese attributes. The cheese comes not in chunks but in bits distributed throughout with the dill, and the two dairy flavors just enhance each other in the tender-crumbed scone.
Laughlin’s Bakery is located at 15 E. Second Avenue, in the Short North.
For more information, visit www.laughlinsbakery.com.
All photos by Walker Evans.
